The Uses of Utopia

A Musical Investigation of Thomas More's Seminal Work

Friday, 1 July 2016

Performances at 11 am, 2 pm, and 4 pm

Somerset House

Strand, London WC2R 1LA

Please find us at the Utopia Treasury at Somerset House, which is in the Great Arch Hall, easily accessible at the ground level from the Victoria Embankment entrance to the building. www.utopia2016.com

Concert Programme

In seeking to musically express some of the themes of Thomas More’s 1516 work Utopia, we were inspired by the primacy of the book’s structure. The first half of our concert, like the first half of More’s book, is composed of all things English. Works by Tye, Pygott, and Henry VIII express the religious ideals, social fabric, and political reality of the time. The second half of the concert comprises Franco-Flemish works, both speaking to the setting of Peter Giles’s and Raphael Hythloday’s discussion, the location where More wrote the second half of the book, and the idealised foreign land of Utopia.